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I was chatting to a mate of mine in lettings and estate agency game in
Manchester. He is one of these sort of guys that is into the latest fad of
social media.. he has a facebook account, twitter account, PIN interest (I
thought that was club for people who like wall hanging implements).. Ask.fm etc etc .

I asked him what
business he got from it .. the ROI (return on investment - management techno speak) .. he couldn’t answer. As a fellow agent, that has helped some letting agents with
knowledge of the dark arts of social media, I can see it from both sides. This is what I told my Manchester letting agent friend ... Social media doesnt sell or let more property, but what it does do is
get you contact with more vendors and landlords. Its what you say that makes a
'potential' client turn into 'actual' client … by making attractive and
appealing to read news and views, that answers the issues of your potential
client.The question is, who are you clients,
where can they be…

So lets look at it from the landlords point of view .. 'Do they really care you have listed a 2 bed flat at £600 pcm' ..... answer honestly, no they dont... Before you answer that, do you Mr or Mrs letting agent care what properties your sister office have listed? again .. another noSo why the hell do letting agents tweet all their new listings on twitter, or post their new listings on facebook or linkedn?I was talking to a letting agent from Cheshire about all the noise out there in the world, all the messages, adverts, announcements, pitches and friend requests. He said he couldnt be bothered to read all the millions of tweets and posts .. to which i replied .... "And you're sending your listings out there, so even you are sending even more every day into that bedlam, that internet turmoil.""No we're not," he said. "Ours isn't noise." Sorry Mr Cheshire letting agent .... Yes it is. .. please stop it.

If you reserve your best effort for the irritable landlord, the
never-pleased landlord and the bully of a landlord, then you've bought into a
system that rewards the very people who are driving you nuts. It's no wonder
you have landlords like that--they get your best work.

On the other hand, when you make it clear (and then deliver) on the promise
that your best work goes to those that are clear, respectful and patient, you
become a specialist in having landlords just like that.

In a previous job, one of the largest turning points of my career was me
telling a client that i could longer work for him. He accounted for a third of
my company's work. We were becoming really good at tolerating the stress that
came from this engagement, and it became clear to me that we were about to sign
up for a lifetime of landlord’s like that. Set free to work for those that we
believed deserved our best work, we replaced the lost business in less than six
months.
Years ago, I heard the stor…

If you want landlords to walk through your door, the first thing you have to do is grab their attention. Once you have their attention, the next step is the most difficult, you have to be interesting and build up that interest to a point they want to come and talk to you .. because you are so interesting (not because they want to give you any business .. that comes later) There is nothing more interesting than if you talk about the local property market .... here are some examples I have used in the past. Now places like Sleaford, Stamford and Melton Mowbray are all boring litlle towns in the East Midlands, but what if you changed the places for areas around you... remember, a landlord in Uxbridge only cares about Uxbridge property, a landlord in Kingston upon Thames only cares about KuT and Southampton about Southampton... there arent many landlords who buy in every county .. they tend to buy in one place ....

oh by the way, dont dismiss these articles ...they more than tripled market…

I don't think you can
underestimate how important it is to most people to be right. People choose letting agents, the properties they buy, the
workman to fix the roof ... just about everything... in many ways because it
makes them feel right or at least diminishes the chance that they will be
'caught' being wrong. The landlord isalways right. When they're wrong,
they're not your landlord any more, because it's better to flee than be wrong. I know, there's a huge need to have right facts and right
practice, particularly in lettings where quality of service is essential. Got
that. My point is that we're so good at getting those sort of facts right that
maybe, just maybe, we need to spend more time teaching people the other stuff.
Short version: if your job can be completely written up in a manual, it's
either not a great job or it's going to be done by someone cheaper, sometime
soon. Other stuff .. like
caring for the property as if it were your own…

I was recently talking
to someone who wanted to open their own estate agency/letting agency. A friend
of theirs had given them some feedback on a new project proposal. The friend
said, "It will have trouble standing out on Estate Agent’s row, because
that's already crowded." The thing is, every
Estate agent’s row and street in every town and nowadays, especially online is
crowded. And the problem on the
crowded High Street, and with all these online agents, is that your odds of
getting found and getting picked are slim indeed, slimmer than ever before. Which is why 'the High
Street can't be your goal. If you need to get picked from the High street, then
you've already lost. Now i am not
advocating online agencies. I still believe if you want to be a big player, you
need such a presence (but that is not what this ditty is all about) The only opportunity
(which of course, is the best opportunity ever for most of us) is to skip
depending on being found on the High…

You could say my firm, lets call it Bloggs and Co, its all about
service, quality and customer focus. I say this my blogging friends, you
haven't answered my question, because every lettings agent’s
brand stand for that. If you are what others are, then your brand is nothing,
nothing to own, certainly nothing to protect (everyone else has it) or even
build on build upon.

So what does your lettings brand stand for? So, when you compare
your lettings brand, you are competing against other lettings brands for existing and future attention, for business
(existing and new), for free vals (opps they call them market appraisals don’t
they nowadays) for loyalty, for recognition and to attract the best employees.

So, again, what makes your brand so special?

Premier Inn, Travellodge, Holiday Inn... they don't actually stand for
anything, do they? They can't, because they stand for precisely the same thing
– cheap hotels – good but still place to put your head on a pillow. Nike vs.
Pu…

As letting agents, our instinct is to believe that we have to
make our service faster, costs less, works so much better and is generally off
the charts at doing what the service is supposed to do. Us agents get our minds
around one performance measure and decide that the one and only way we can be
remarkable is to knock that measure out of the Cricket ground (wasn’t it good
that we won The Ashes).

What a load of tosh I say. Humans do choose something because it is the fastest
or smallest, when they have a choice.

I don’t know about you, but I never buy the item because it excels at a certain
announced measure. Almost no one drives the fastest car nor do choose the most
efficient credit card. No, we buy a story. The story is the thing that the
service also does. It's the other reason we buy something, and usually, the
real reason. Why .. well lest think? You have a six year old son. The last time
he unexpectedly woke up after going to bed was two years ago. Of course, you're
go…

When was the last time you watch the adverts on TV as intently
as the program? Bet you put the kettle on instead? It is just a matter of fact
that nobody watches TV advert. But what about those adverts you do like to
watch. My favourite is the Money Supermarket ones, EPIC! You watch it because
you like it.

Now, let’s look at press advertising. Just like TV, people don’t read press
adverts, they cant be bothered with the second car adverts or the classified
ads with the plumbers and decorators. No, customers, clients, in fact all
people read what interests them. Make an advert interesting, and they will read
your advert. Is a grid of 5 x 5 really interesting?

Adverts are everywhere and the game of repetition and dissemination is still
what captures the interest of your customer, but there's something else
happening to the property industry that is worthy of thinking about. It's also
worth noting that the people who care most about estate agency marketing and
advertising is usua…

By the time the phone rings, there's already trouble. If someone
asks for the lettings manager it's because someone is disappointed, angry or
stuck. No sign of the gas man to fix the boiler, a nonreturn of a deposit,
broken promises or a real urgency have led to this new conversation even taking
place.

So don't start with, ‘Bloggs and Co Lettings… mumble mumble’ as if there's a
blank drywipe board just waiting to be written on. There's already a lot of
writing on that shiny white surface. Don't demand to know their tenant
reference number or begin with doubt, a sigh, a huff and an edge of ‘here we go
again’

‘Wow, it sounds like we have got a issue on our hands’ is a great way to
neutralise the person you're about to talk with. They won't have to spend the first
ten sentences expressing their disappointment, even anger and urgency, because
in twelve words, you've done it for them. Or perhaps, you could even say ‘I'd
like to help, if you'll br…

Option No.2 is pressed ... here comes trouble. By the time the
phone rings, there's already trouble. If someone asks for the lettings manager
it's because someone is disappointed, angry or stuck. No sign of the gas man to
fix the boiler, a nonreturn of a deposit, broken promises or a real urgency
have led to this new conversation even taking place.

So don't start with, ‘Bloggs and Co Lettings… mumble mumble’ as if there's a
blank drywipe board just waiting to be written on. There's already a lot of
writing on that shiny white surface. Don't demand to know their tenant
reference number or begin with doubt, a sigh, a huff and an edge of ‘here we go
again’

‘Wow, it sounds like we have got a issue on our hands’ is a great way to
neutralise the person you're about to talk with. They won't have to spend the
first ten sentences expressing their disappointment, even anger and urgency,
because in twelve words, you've done it for them. Or perhaps, you could e…

Those of you that read what I have to ramble, in my thoughts on
how to be a better letting agent, will know my passion of
storytelling, and how story telling can get you tangible business, more
landlords ringing you for market appraisals and for the estate agency department, more potential vendors ringing
you for a good old free val...

So in previous posts, I have discussed why you should tell stories. In this
ramble, I want to talk about what makes a good story

Good stories accomplish something because they are able to capture the
imagination of a decent number or important groups of people. A good story is
true. Not necessarily because it’s factual, but because it’s unfailing and
genuine. Landlords and vendors are too good at sniffing out contradictions for
an estate agent or a letting agent to get away with a story that’s just slapped
on.

Good stories make a promise. They promise security, pleasure or fun (although I wouldn't say lettings is fun). The promise needs to be bold …

You can be the letting agent that is perfect. The one that always
rings his landlords every week, on time, without fail, whose brochures are a
masterpiece of English prose, floor plans that an architect would be proud of,
26 photographs that David Bailey would call his own. You know your section 21's, even the section 21 a or b. .. hell you even know the AST be heart. Your twitter feed is sent
out on the hour, every hour with rolling ‘top ten tips for landlords’ messages,
mixed in with every lettings listing you list. You might be boring, but you are
always right.

Or you can be the person who makes your agency interesting. The thing about
being interesting, whereby you create a remarkable service that landlords love, is that you don’t need to be full-on all the time, because
people will forgive you missing the odd call, the odd missing file note yet, if
you delight them, make them happy about themselves, the awesome service you
provide. Why? Because in this grey world, being char…

A
was talking to friend of mine, who has been running his own estate agency for
over 5 years. He thought he best get on with this social media lark, so for the
last 12 months has been doing Twitter. Doing Twitter, I said. Yeah .. to which
i said .. got any landlords or free vals from it? He said no. He asked me for my feedback... His
twitter feeds comprise mainly his new properties he has listed. If you want to
have every, mover and shaker, every tie wearing, suit wearing person, every
bank manager, accountant, dentist, doctor or local business owner (of of whish
are all your landlord pool), then sending out your listings isn’t the way
forward .. so I asked him this of his twitter campaign ... 1.Just because you have had a previous
relationship with someone doesn't mean you have permission to email them. Is
your tweet anticipated, personal and relevant. The simple measure is this:
Would they miss you if you didn't mail them? If not, then you're fooling
yourself into thinkin…

The Author

Hello, my name is Christopher Watkin from Grantham in Lincolnshire.

This blog are some of my thoughts on the systems I have adopted, adapted and improved to organically grow estate and lettings agency's by at least 20% to 30% per year. (you will say what is the catch - hard work and persistence)